Science confirms being 'hangry' is definitely a thing

Finally, the root cause of all dickishness has been proven.

We've all been there. You have a pointless row with your other half over nothing or blow a friend's Facebook status completely out of proportion and then mid-drama, it hits you. You're hungry.

Acting angry when you're actually just hungry - i.e. being hangry - is basically the root cause of all dickishness in this life.

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Just look at Jeremy Clarkson, who appaz smacked a Top Gear producer in the face last week and lost his job because nobody had laid on dinner for him after a long day shooting. Classic hanger. Mixed in with some general dickishness, too, no doubt.

Well, hangry people far and wide will rejoice this week, as the elusive 'condition' has finally been proven by scientists.

Dr. Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at The Ohio State University, recently conducted research centered around hunger and self control.

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The researchers followed married couples over 21 days and found that "levels of blood glucose in married people, measured each night, predicted how angry they would be with their spouse that evening."

The team measured the spouse's anger by giving them voodoo dolls with 52 pins. At the end of each night the pair would put pins into the doll to represent how angry they were with their spouse.

The results showed that those with lower blood glucose at the end of the night put more pins in their voodoo spouse.

In an interview with Huffington Post, Bushman said: "We found that being hangry can affect our behaviour in a bad way, even in our most intimate relationships."

But what is the link between hunger and anger? Bushman explained "Aggression often starts when self-control stops."

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"We know the pre-frontal cortex part of your brain is responsible for self-control. And we also know that it needs energy. Our brain needs energy to exercise self-control. Even though it's only about 2% of your body weight, it uses 20-30% of the calories we consume. And it gets those calories from food."

So when you're food-deprived, you're basically starving your brain the energy it needs to stop us losing our shit.

To further prove his theory about the link between calorific deprivation and anger, Bushman did another experiment on students with researchers from University of Kentucky.

The team randomly assigned half the students to a group that drink lemonade sweetened with real sugar. The other group drank lemonade sweetened with Splenda, which has no calorific content.

The students were then "given a chance to blast an ostensible opponent with loud noise through headphones."

It was found that those given the lemonade with real sugar were a lot kinder when it came to the genre and volume of the music they blasted strangers with, whereas those that had Splenda were far more aggressive. Think heavy metal at top volume.

So basically, eat all the things and your life will be infinitely happier? We can get on board with that.